SharePoint 2010 brought some new capabilities but at the same time challenged the implementation teams with making some tough decisions. One of them is – how to implement records management. In MOSS 2007 – it was simple; the only possibility to achieve the functionality was through setting up Records Center site. In this case, for the content to be declared as a record, it had to be moved to separate storage area. SharePoint 2010 now offers In-Place Records Management – content that was declared as the record stays where it was originally, but the additional information management policies need to be applied to make sure it is immutable. Which solution is better? Which one should be chosen?
As expected there is no simple answer to this question – it depends. But once the decision is made, the organization needs to live with its consequences. The way back is costly and time consuming, it makes reversing the course usually unfeasible. So what are the pros and cons of either solution? The list below captures some of the key differences and their potential impact. Please note that some of the functionality was split to reflect the fact that business users and records managers are often driven by conflicting requirements – ease of filing, access, finding information and ability to collaborate for business users and ability to restrict access, protection and enforcing retention rules for records managers.
| Feature | In-place | Records Center | Comment |
| Retention | Implemented through information management policies by content type. It might provide more flexibility in getting the rules more granular but at the cost of maintenance complexity. | Simple – once record is placed in its bucket, it inherits its retention rules. | Most of business users are not concerned by the retention; this is of primary interest to records managers. However what needs to be taken into account, if implementing in-place records management, the records lifespan might be longer than the hosting site. This creates potential problems with records preservation when the site needs to be disposed. This could lead to tendency to keep obsolete sites live, exposing the organization to legal and regulatory risks, and increased storage costs. |
| Security/Accessibility | No ability to restrict access to records, the record maintains the same visibility across its lifecycle | The content visibility and the ability to see its existence in search results can be restricted | This could be a concern for records of sensitive nature especially in areas of HR, and Legal departments, or in case of mergers and acquisitions. |
| Findability of information – business user perspective | Excellent, since records reside within their context in their corresponding libraries and folders | Might be poor, since same content types reside in the same buckets. | This category addresses primarily needs of business users – to locate quickly and easily the information. Since in case of in-place implementation, records are preserved at their source, it is easy to locate the information through its context. In case of the Records Center implementation, the key success factors are related to good governance policies, their implementation, as well as rich and good quality metadata. |
| Findability of records / eDiscovery – records manager perspective | Usually good, though the search needs to span multiple sites | Good since all records are located in Records Center, but eDiscovery will require search in both sites and in Records Center | In case of Records Center good quality of metadata is important. eDiscovery of records in Records Center is fairly straightforward and quick, however since eDiscovery covers any content – declared as records or non-declared, it will not eliminate need of searching across all locations. |
| Ease of records management | Complex since records are spread across various sites, libraries and folders | Easy since records reside in central location with common sets of rules | Managing records declared in-place might become messy. Strict governance and control of granularity of information management policies is required. The governance must include cases how to handle records if their survivability exceeds the site lifespan, as well as defining of who can un-declare or supersede records per site. Auditing of the records management and records reporting becomes more complex. |
| Ease of site management | Complex – since sites contain both mutable and immutable content | Simple – sites contain only documents that are not yet declared as records, or stubs to Records Center content | Sites with in-place records management become more difficult to manage due to differences in how records and transitory documents are handled. Strict governance is required. |
| Ability to audit records | More complex | Simple | Ability to audit records in in-place implementation depends on each sites audit policies implementation. There are no out of the box compliance reports available. Strict governance is required. |
| Administrative security | By site administrators | By records managers | In in-place implementation, site administrators have ability to manage both transitory documents and records. This might not be desirable in case of organization in heavily regulated industries, where single responsibility for preservation of records resides with records managers. |
| Storage | Transitory documents and records reside on the same storage medium | Scalability could be easily ensured by placing records on separate storage medium | In-place implementation might lead to increased storage requirements for both documents that are being actively collaborated and records that might be rarely accessed. Performance issues, security and organizational disaster recovery requirements must be taken into account (this is not the same as simple backups). |
| Declaring of Document Sets as records | Yes | No | Current version of SharePoint does not allow for declaring Document Sets as records in Records Center |
So how to determine which one is more suitable for given organization? There are several factors that will ultimately influence the decision, like:
– Company culture – strict or more relaxed
– How heavily regulated is the industry
– What are the legal, regulatory and statutory requirements
– Existing processes for handling records – is there already dedicated staff to manage records?
– Business continuity planning requirements
– Existing business processes – are document sets best suitable in the organization (this is weak point however, as I am sure that Microsoft is going to come with solution for Document Sets handling soon)
– Information growth rate and proliferation of sites and sites collections
Decision on the method of records management implementation should not be taken lightly as it will have long term impacts on costs, change management, user adoption, governance, sites and records management, compliance and others. There is no easy way back.
